iii Reading Medieval Chinese Poetry Text, Context, and Culture Edited by Paul W. Kroll LEIDEN | BOSTON This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents Contents v Contents Contributors vii Introduction 1 Paul W. Kroll Trading Literary Competence: Exchange Poetry in the Eastern Jin 6 Wendy Swartz Shen Who Couldn’t Write: Literary Relationships at the Court of Liu Jun 36 Robert Joe Cutter Ruin and Remembrance in Classical Chinese Literature: The “Fu on the Ruined City” by Bao Zhao 55 David R. Knechtges An Offering to the Prince: Wang Bo’s Apology for Poetry 90 Ding Xiang Warner Beyond Border and Boudoir: The Frontier in the Poetry of the Four Elites of Early Tang 130 Timothy Wai Keung Chan Heyue yingling ji and the Attributes of High Tang Poetry 169 Paul W. Kroll Who Wrote That? Attribution in Northern Song Ci 202 Stephen Owen When There is a Parallel Text in Prose: Reading Lu You’s 1170 Yangzi River Journey in Poetry and Prose 221 Ronald Egan Judith Gautier and the Invention of Chinese Poetry 251 Pauline Yu This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV vi Contents Collective Bibliography 289 Index 307 Contents v Acknowledgments vii Contributors vii INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction 1 Paul W. Kroll 5 Trading Literary Competence: Exchange Poetry in the Eastern Jin 6 Wendy Swartz 6 Shen Who Couldn’t Write: Literary Relationships at the Court of Liu Jun 36 Robert Joe Cutter 36 Ruin and Remembrance in Classical Chinese Literature: The “Fu On The Ruined City” by Bao Zhao 55 David R. Knechtges 55 An Offering to the Prince: Wang Bo’s Apology for Poetry 90 Ding Xiang Warner 90 Beyond Border and Boudoir: The Frontier in the Poetry of the Four Elites of Early Tang Timothy Wai Keung Chan 130 Heyue yingling ji and the Attributes of High Tang Poetry 169 Paul W. Kroll 169 Who Wrote That? Attribution in Northern Song Ci 202 Stephen Owen 202 When There Is a Parallel Text in Prose: Reading Lu You’s 1170 Yangzi River Journey in Poetry and Prose 221 Ronald Egan 221 Judith Gautier and the Invention of Chinese Poetry 251 Pauline Yu 251 Collective Bibliography 289 Collective Bibliography 289 Index 307 Index 307 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 6 Swartz Trading Literary Competence: Exchange Poetry in the Eastern Jin Wendy Swartz Poetics during the Eastern Jin 晉 dynasty (317–420) was largely shaped by xuanyan 玄言, a type of metaphysical discourse that primarily drew topics, ideas, and language from the Yijing, Laozi, Zhuangzi (later collectively known as the “Three Mysterious Works,” san xuan 三玄), and their respective com- mentaries.1 Most of the extant examples of xuanyan verse from this period are of the exchange or group variety, products of a social ritual pervasive among the Wei-Jin gentry class.2 Exchange poetry in the xuanyan mode grew out of “pure conversation” (qing tan 清談), a scholarly practice and social activity with its own rules, criteria, and instruments.3 These conversations covered subjects ranging from metaphysics to epistemology to behavior and sought reconciliations between ideas from the Three Mysterious Works and the au- thority of the classics. As an extension of the conversational genre, Eastern Jin exchange poetry accorded the same priority to the Three Mysterious Works. In such poetic dialogues, the writer often skillfully couches his message to his friend in allusions drawn from these philosophical texts. Literary competence is equally required of the reader to decipher the codes within which the mes- sage is inscribed. The exchange of poems that draw from a shared and circum- scribed set of cultural meanings ultimately affirmed a collective identity. Marcel Mauss observed that in archaic societies the exchange of goods and services served to establish a “bond of alliance and commonality.”4 The gift of 1 Xuanyan translates literally to “discourse on the mysterious [Dao].” The term xuan appears in the first chapter of the Laozi as a reference to the Dao: “These two [being 有 and non-being 無] have the same origin, but different names. Both are called the mystery (xuan); mystery upon mystery is the gateway to all marvelousness.” See also Paul W. Kroll’s useful explication of the term xuan in “Between Something and Nothing,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 127 (2007): 409. 2 For a general survey in English of zengda (“presentation and response”) poetry in early medi- eval China, see David Zebulon Raft, “Four-syllable Verse in Medieval China” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 2007), 284–381. 3 Conversationalists often looked to the golden age of discourse, the Zhengshi 正始 era (240– 49), for classic examples of rhetoric, style, argumentation, etc. Many of the written discourses adopted the structure of the dramatic dialogue, in which a “host” and a “guest” argue a topic in numerous rounds. 4 Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls (New © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004282063_003 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV Trading Literary Competence 7 a poem and the return of one between literati men in premodern China was such a form of social compact that identified and banded together a certain group. Shared appreciation of a select set of texts and interpretations attested not only to the bonds of friendship but also the participants’ cultural stock. In an age in which poetic output increasingly became a type of cultural capital that could be converted into political gain or social prestige, poetic exchanges and social poetry allowed one to display one’s ability to produce and interpret cul- tural products, a competence that is cultivated and transmitted within families or social groups.5 The degree of success in producing and interpreting cultural products to a great extent hinged upon one’s mastery of texts and allusions. The accumulation and transmission of a certain cultural wealth through the subscription to a set of shared texts and methods as well as goals of study iden- tified the membership of the literati elite and ensured its privileges. In early medieval China, cultural currency was very much based on fluency in xuanxue 玄學 discourse, a repertoire of arguments, notions, and values that permeated the lives and sensibilities of the literati and informed their views on aspects ranging from office, reclusion, and friendship, to the ideal character type and mindset. A literary competence that specialized in xuanxue topics and terms con- summated exchanges between Eastern Jin writers. In a stroke of rare good for- tune during the early medieval process of textual preservation, a pair of exchange poems—one by Xie An 謝安 (320–385) and a response from Wang Huzhi 王胡之 (fl. 330–360s)—has been transmitted intact. The other ex- change that I will treat in this essay is represented by only the response poem: Sun Chuo’s 孫綽 (314–371) answer to Xu Xun’s 許詢 (ca. 326-after 347) now lost poem. The value and interest in examining Sun’s response here lie in at least two points: it supposedly summarizes the lost poem and it reveals what literary competence Sun Chuo reasonably expected of his audience, which is of as much interest to our discussion as whether the audience did in fact pos- sess it. Poetic transactions made through the medium of xuanxue issues and lan- guage did not begin in the Eastern Jin, though the trend reached its peak dur- ing this period. It is instructive therefore to review briefly an earlier and York: W.W. Norton, 1990), 13; originally published as Essai sur le Don: Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques (L’Année Sociologique, 1923). 5 For a fuller discussion of cultural capital in early medieval China, see Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook, ed. Wendy Swartz et al. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2014), 195–99. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 8 Swartz well-known set of poetic correspondences from the end of the Western Jin be- tween Liu Kun 劉琨 (271–318) and Lu Chen 盧諶 (285–351).6 In Lu Chen’s tet- rasyllabic poem and Liu Kun’s response to it, these two relatives by marriage reflect on recent momentous events in their intertwined lives—from the fall of the north, the death of most members of their families during the turmoil, to Lu Chen’s transfer from Liu Kun’s staff to a new job with the Xianbei leader Duan Pidi 段匹磾 (d. 322), Liu Kun’s rather dubious ally who would eventually order Liu’s execution. Lu Chen expresses hope that Liu Kun will appreciate the meaning behind his words, which are reduced to mere expedient vehicles in the process of communication, following Wang Bi’s王弼 (226–249 ce) famous application of the Zhuangzian story of the fish trap and rabbit snare to his reading of the Yijing. Lu Chen also invokes the core lesson from Zhuangzi’s “Qi wu lun” 齊物論 to place all things on the same level, which would enable one to become free from emotional entanglements. In response, Liu Kun admits his inability to level with equanimity such things as life and death, for he has found the Zhuangzian notion to be incommensurate to real experience and the clinging feelings of loss. What I want to highlight here is that their medita- tions on loss, both personal and public, are couched in discussions of big xuanxue topics of the day, such as the lesson of leveling all distinctions and the question of whether enlightened men are immune to feelings, which devel- oped from Wang Bi’s and He Yan’s debate on whether sages possessed common feelings (a point that will be discussed below).